'Months after giving birth I was diagnosed with Postpartum Psychosis - I was lucky to survive'
27.01.2024 - 08:15
/ ok.co.uk
Ruth Hanna, 40, was loving life in Spain and settling into motherhood when she began worrying obsessively about her baby boy’s health and believing she had somehow harmed him. Alarmingly, she had developed Postpartum Psychosis (PPP), a condition which very nearly cost her her life. As we mark Parent Mental Health Day, she opens up to OK! about her frightening experience, how ECT (known as ‘electric shock’ treatment) saved her and why she is raising awareness.
“My son Koa was born in September 2019 and after a straightforward pregnancy, I felt really lucky. But in February, I stopped sleeping and suddenly became obsessed with the fear that Koa was sick. I’d fixate on little things, like whether his fingers were too curled in, and worried he wasn’t developing properly.
I saw a nurse, who prescribed diazepam to calm me down, and my mum came to Spain, where we lived, to sleep on the sofa, but my behaviour escalated. My husband Jamie, 46, was working on an oil rig in Mexico, but at night I’d pace the flat, saying Koa would be taken off us or that we’d injured him and would go to jail. Somehow I went through the motions of feeding, bathing and dressing him, so things looked fairly normal from the outside, but I wasn’t sleeping or eating.
I was having panic attacks and would lie on the floor, crying. After an intense two-weeks like this, something horrific happened. I have a blurry memory of getting up around 5am one morning, checking on Koa and mum, before getting in the car in my pyjamas.
I had no shoes on, but drove along the motorway, before parking on the hard shoulder and getting out. All I remember next is lights, and hearing someone say ‘get her a blanket,’ then waking up in hospital. I later discovered I’d walked out
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